Study tracks hunger among children

from USA Today

By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — One of every four children in New Mexico and Texas and one of every five in a dozen other states, live in households that struggle to provide enough food at some point during the year, a report released Thursday says.

The report is the first to give a state-by-state look at child hunger based on annual Census Bureau data, says Ross Frazer, spokesman for America's Second Harvest, the nation's largest hunger-relief group, which released the study. It analyzes data from 2003 to 2005, giving a three-year average.

"It is a real eye-opener to see that so many states have such high rates of child food insecurity and hunger," says author John Cook, an expert on child hunger and pediatrics professor at Boston University School of Medicine. He says lack of healthful food can damage a child's physical and mental development.

Nationwide, the report finds that 13 million children, or 18%, were hungry or at risk of hunger. That percentage has held fairly steady in the past decade. New Hampshire had the smallest share of kids facing hunger, 7%, followed by North Dakota with 9%.

States with rates of 20% or above include California, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee and Utah. The District of Columbia also was in this group.

The nation's neediest kids do receive help. Nearly 15 million low-income children get free school lunches, and 7 million get free breakfasts, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

More than 50,000 also take home backpacks on Fridays that are filled with a few pounds of healthful food provided by local food banks, civic groups and churches, Frazer says.

"The problem is the gap in services," says Jan Pruitt, chief executive officer of the North Texas Food Bank in Dallas. She says not enough needy families get food stamps and free school meals because of the stigma of being poor.

"I call it the demonization of food stamps," Pruitt says.

In Texas, Pruitt says, demand for food has steadily risen in recent years as working poor families struggle to pay for gas and housing.

In New Mexico, hunger among kids has been a consistent problem, says Jasmin Holmstrup, spokeswoman of the Roadrunner Food Bank of New Mexico.

She says the state has a high poverty rate and large rural areas, so people have to drive far to buy food. She says there is one food store for every 480 square miles.

In another report on hunger this week, the USDA said a total of 35.5 million, or 12%, of U.S. residents, were "food insecure" at some time during 2006, up from 35.1 million in 2005. The data, also culled from the Census, do not include people who are homeless.

Single mothers and their kids were the most likely to face hunger, the USDA report said.

Relatively few kids — less than 1% — lived in "very low food security" households where members ate less because they could not afford to buy enough food.

In these households, adults are the ones most likely to skip meals because "parents go to heroic lengths to protect their kids from hunger," says John Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, a hunger-relief advocacy group.

Even if the kids are fed enough, Weill says, they suffer from seeing their parents stressed.

Weill says he expects the number of food insecure people nationwide will rise because of higher food and energy prices.

State-by-state look at child hunger

Percentage of children hungry or at risk of hunger averaged during the 2003-2005 period, according to an analysis by America's Second Harvest of data from the U.S. Census Bureau's annual Current Population Survey:

State Pctg.
Alaska 18.0%
Idaho 21.2%
Mont. 17.1%
R.I. 17.4%
Ala. 17.8%
Ill. 15.4%
N.C. 21.1%
S.C. 20.0%
Ark. 18.5%
Ind. 16.5%
N.D. 9.3%
S.D. 15.3%
Ariz. 19.0%
Kan. 17.2%
Neb. 16.2%
Tenn. 21.2%
Calif. 20.4%
Ky. 20.0%
N.H. 7.2%
Texas 24.3%
Colo. 17.3%
La. 15.3%
N.J. 12.6%
Utah 20.4%
Conn. 11.6%
Mass. 10.8%
N.M. 24.3%
Va. 14.3%
D.C. 21.5%
Md. 13.4%
Nev. 15.8%
Vt. 14.4%
Del. 12.1%
Maine 19.3%
N.Y. 16.8%
Wash. 19.7%
Fla. 15.9%
Mich. 18.1%
Ohio 19.8%
Wis. 17.4%
Ga. 17.4%
Minn. 10.6%
Okla. 22.2%
W.Va. 13.9%
Hawaii 12.1%
Mo. 15.9%
Ore. 22.8%
Wyo. 18.7%
Iowa 17.3%
Miss. 20.3%
Pa. 16.8%